Potential victims of a rapist like McGinley need to see his face...

WOULD you know what rapist Simon McGinley looked like if he was to turn up on your doorstep offering his services as a gardener, say, or as a handyman to fix your roof or clean your guttering?

Would your elderly neighbour or mother open her door to him? Would your daughter approach his car to give him directions, not recognising this singularly monstrous sex offender, not knowing the danger she was facing?

The most recent picture of McGinley, who has served time for two exceptionally shocking and brutal rapes, dates from 2009, when he was jailed for 21 years for attacking an 85-year-old woman.

He had previously been jailed for the rape of a 13-year-old girl, whose resulting pregnancy led to the infamous ‘C case’ in 1997, after she tried to go to the UK for an abortion.

She’d been babysitting for him and his wife and, as he drove her home in his van, he punched her in the face, ripped off her clothes and raped her. He left her disfigured, pregnant and terrified by his threat to cut her up if she reported the attack.

McGinley got 12 years that time, but with remission he was freed again to rape the pensioner at her home in Monaghan in 2008. He appealed his 21-year sentence, and is back on the streets, having served just 13 years.

When he was released this week, McGinley took care to hide his face with a mask, a balaclava and a baseball cap. It would seem that McGinley, a Traveller from Dundalk, is keen to be able to move about in public without being recognised.

As my old friends in the utterly ludicrous Irish Council for Civil Liberties would surely be quick to point out, McGinley has served his time and is entitled to his right to privacy. He is not, however, the only one with rights here.

This is a highly dangerous man who has not, so far as we know, had any rehabilitation in prison: if he did so the first time, it certainly didn’t work. He could, and arguably should, have been jailed for the rest of his life as a serial rapist, but instead he’s a free man today.

He’ll be under post-release supervision for the next 12 years but what, in reality, does that mean? Released sex offenders are ‘monitored’ by the Probation Service to ensure they don’t pose a serious threat of harm to the public. Well, that worked brilliantly with McGinley last time, didn’t it?

There has to be an extremely high risk of this savage striking again, and unless he’s got gardaí on his tail 24/7, there’s absolutely nothing to stop him raping another child, or another pensioner.

McGinley’s rights should not outweigh the rights of those women now at risk of being his future victims. Their rights to be protected from an animal like McGinley should ensure that all repeat rapists, especially where their crimes have been of such brutality, are electronically tagged for at least a decade post-release.

Unless the gardaí and the probation service can tell where McGinley is at all times, and unless he knows that electronic surveillance will make it possible to connect him instantly to his next victim, then women have clear reason to fear. Otherwise, when you’re dealing with a man who’d rape an old lady within months of serving a jail sentence for raping and maiming a child, monitoring means nothing at all.

AND his potential victims also have a right to know what he looks like so that they can help protect themselves, if he turns up on a doorstep looking for casual work or is spotted prowling in his van. The public should be furnished with mugshots of all serious criminals, such as rapists and murderers, as happens in other countries, rather than relying on the media to try to snatch a photograph outside court or prison. It is simply unacceptable that a dangerous rapist like McGinley can walk out of prison with his face covered.

The usual bleeding hearts will protest that he’s paid his dues, as if it’s ever possible to make reparation for multiple rapes, and that he needs his privacy if he is ever to find a steady job and live a lawabiding life in peace.

If only we could be so sure that’s the only reason why McGinley – savage, recidivist and utterly unrepentant rapist of children and pensioners – does not want unsuspecting members of the public to know what he looks like.